A new species of Pycnogonum (Arthropoda: Pycnogonida: Pycnogonidae) from Hong Kong

Abstract

A new species of pycnogonid, of the genus Pycnogonum, is described from the sandy‐mud benthos at 17 m depth in a submarine cave off eastern Hong Kong. It belongs to a limited group of small species which have no auxiliary claws, a barrel‐shaped proboscis and a male oviger of seven articles. It is distinct in the disposition of dorsal trunk tubercles: only trunk segment three has a midline tubercle, while lateral process tubercles are present only on the third and fourth segments.

Keywords:

• Pycnogonida
• Pycnogonum
• South China Sea
• Hong Kong
• marine caves

Acknowledgements

I am inevitably most grateful to the diving team for the collection of this specimen, and to those participants of the 2002 cave expedition who sorted the material and obtained the environmental data (see elsewhere in these proceedings).